


Flotsam and Jetsam

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Awkwardness, M/M, Moscow, Oral Sex, Rostelecom, Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-07 03:45:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15210206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: Michele Crispino's life falls apart at Rostelecom. An unlikely companion shows up to wander through the wreckage with him and, perhaps, pick up some of the pieces.





	Flotsam and Jetsam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Halrloprillalar (prillalar)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prillalar/gifts).



The last thing that Michele could remember with any sort of clarity was the triple-triple. All the rest of the skate dissolved in his memory in an overpowering sense of loss.

It lifted with the last chord, but a vague, exhausted, sense of absence persisted through the scoring, through Sara's dizzying outburst, through the medal ceremony, through Katsuki's impulsive assault. It didn't matter; nothing, none of it mattered.

It was not all Sara's desertion, and it was not all the knowledge that he would not progress any further. His skate had been good enough for bronze, but bronze would not be good enough for the Grand Prix Final. That didn't matter, either. He had been there last year; he would almost certainly be there again. It made only a small part of this overwhelming desolation. Something infinitely important had gone and could not be brought back no matter who wished it.

He drifted back to the hotel in Sara's wake, hardly hearing her excited chatter or Toni's gruff replies. He declined the suggestion that they should eat something at the bar. 'I'm too tired,' he said. 'I'm going up to my room.'

It was not a lie: he had hardly lain down on the bed before he fell into an exhausted sleep. But within an hour he was awake again, disturbed by a confused dream of blades and roses. Groaning, he rolled over, but sleep would not return. The room felt too hot and too small. He thought of seeking out Sara, but he felt instinctively that, with her free skate tomorrow and under the new regime that she had proclaimed, she would not welcome him. The idea of speaking to anyone else was intolerable. Pulling on coat and boots, he left his room, left the hotel, went out to find some air and some space.

  
He had been walking for some minutes, in no particular direction, with no particular intention beyond getting away, when he was startled by the sound of his own name.

'Michele Crispino. Are you lost?'

Michele spun round. Georgi Popovich stood there, massive arms folded, a faint, pitying smile hovering on his face. Michele hated him.

'Are you following me?' he demanded.

'Your sister was worried.'

It wasn't really an answer, but that was the least of Michele's thoughts. 'She has no need to be,' he said stiffly.

Popovich didn't argue; he only said, 'Where are you going?'

Michele glanced around and saw a disorienting matrix of snowy streets and Cyrillic signposts. He had no desire to spend time in Popovich's company, and he supposed that he ought to get rid of him as soon as possible. But he knew that he was lost, and he knew that it must have been obvious. 'I don't know,' he admitted.

Popovich merely nodded and fell into step beside him. Michele put up with it for a couple of hundred metres before losing his patience and demanding, 'Well?'

'Have you eaten?' Popovich asked.

'What business is it of yours?'

'None; except that your sister asked.'

Popovich seemed to regard Sara's request as a sacred commission, Michele thought. He was again conscious of mingled satisfaction, jealousy, and resentment. Sara had asked Georgi to take care of him. Sara had asked _Georgi_ to take care of him. _Sara_ had asked Georgi to take care of _him_. 'Oh,' he said.

Georgi smiled, said nothing, just kept walking. The silence stretched into awkwardness and out the other side. Michele didn't much care. Their wandering was still meaningless, but he no longer worried about being lost.

After ten minutes or so Michele asked, 'Why are you here, anyway?' His geography of Russia was still hazy, but he knew that St Petersburg was quite some distance from Moscow. He had a rather better idea of the landscape of the men's singles figure skating, and he knew that Georgi trained in St Petersburg, and had already taken part in his allotted two events of the Grand Prix season. There was no obvious reason for him to be in Moscow.

Georgi glanced heavenwards and shrugged his shoulders. 'My Anya was skating.'

'Isn't she dating... someone else?'

'Yes.' He was remarkably sanguine about it. 'Nevertheless, I wanted to wish her well.'

'Oh,' Michele said.

Georgi indicated a brightly lit plate glass window with a nod of his head. 'The food here isn't bad. What do you think?'

It still wasn't any business of Georgi's, but the place looked warm and inviting, and Michele was hungry. 'I suppose we might as well,' he said ungraciously.

It was all the encouragement that Georgi needed. He bustled them inside, signed an autograph for the waiter who seated them, and offered to translate the menu for Michele.

'I don't care.' He was too hungry to be polite. 'You choose.'

'Is there anything you're not allowed to eat?' Georgi asked, all consideration.

'It doesn't really matter now. A potato or two won't ruin my exhibition skate. I don't like peas,' he added, as an afterthought.

Georgi smiled. 'I think we can avoid them.' He beckoned the waiter over and spoke swiftly and softly in Russian.

  
The food turned out to be hot, plentiful, and delicious, and served with surprisingly good wine. Georgi carefully told him the names of all the dishes, and what was in them. Michele didn't really listen to the words, just let the comforting rumble of Georgi's voice roll past him.

Picking his way through the wreckage of what he'd assumed was his life, Michele found that he was grateful for the company. Georgi couldn't understand about Sara, but he would at least know what it felt like to have got so close to the Grand Prix Final. It had surely cost him something to come here to Rostelecom, to watch Yuri Plisetsky step into Victor Nikiforov's boots as if it was his right. And yet there he'd been in the competitors' seats; here he was now, telling Michele that he'd seen maturity and development in his skate. Would he have been so gracious about someone who had advanced to the Grand Prix Final? Perhaps he would. There was a freedom about him that must have been the aftermath of disappointment. Michele wondered whether the same was due to him.

'Are you feeling better?' Georgi asked at last, when the plates had been taken away and the bottle of wine was empty.

Michele nodded. He was feeling full rather than hungry; he was feeling warm rather than cold; the fog of fatigue had lifted; and even if the world was still a ruin he was more hopeful that he might be able to salvage something from the wreckage.

'Good. Let's move on.'

Michele did not quite have the courage to ask where. He pulled his wallet from his pocket and thrust a handful of banknotes at Georgi, who raised his eyebrows, returned quite a lot of them, and paid by card.

  
There was no one else on the street. The snow was falling, and they stood just out of the oblong of light that fell from the restaurant's windows. Michele hesitated a moment, not knowing how to get back to the hotel from here, not sure whether he wanted to, not daring to think what he might do instead.

Georgi touched him lightly on the elbow. 'Well.'

'Thank you,' Michele said. 'For coming out to find me. I'll tell Sara you did as she asked.'

'No, thank _you_. For your company.'

'I'm not very good company today.'

'I wouldn't say that. At all.' Georgi folded an arm around Michele and kissed him, swiftly, lightly, on the cheek. It was a perfectly appropriate way to end an evening; but Michele was slow to react, and, turning to meet him, clutched Georgi's sleeve a little harder than he'd meant to, and somehow ended up kissing him in turn.

After a moment, Michele made himself break away. 'I should get back. Goodness only knows what's happened to Sara while I've been away.'

Georgi chuckled. 'She said she was going to bed, so probably nothing.'

Michele thought about that for a moment. Perhaps it was true. _Probably_ it was true. Perhaps it didn't matter if it wasn't.

'Where are _you_ staying?' he asked. 'I didn't see you at the hotel.'

'My cousin has a place not far from here,' Georgi said. 'It's nothing special, but this is a good excuse to catch up with her.' He glanced at Michele. 'She's out tonight.'

'Oh?' Michele said, as neutrally as he could manage.

'Would you like to come back with me?'

Michele swallowed. 'Why not?' he said. He took Georgi's proffered arm, and let him lead him through the quiet, snowy back streets of Moscow.

  
Georgi's cousin's place was, as he had said, nothing special: a bedroom; a living room, with the sofa pulled out to form a bed; a kitchen, a cramped little hallway. Michele barely noticed, intent on the moment, on the space between their two bodies, and the play of light and shadow on Georgi's face in the soft glow of the lamp. He supposed that he should have been scared, or at least nervous. He wasn't.

It went against everything that Toni had said about not making things complicated with his competitors. Michele didn't care. He was bewitched, enthralled by Georgi's presence and his confidence, and he watched himself succumb with a detachment that was surprised it wasn't horror. He was at once amused observer and enthusiastic participant. Perhaps it was the wine, he thought; perhaps it was just everything.

Georgi helped him out of his jacket and then stood looking at him.

'You're like a spring sunset,' he said, 'all purple and gold.'

Michele laughed at the studiedness of it. Georgi was a performer through and through, and every word he spoke, every movement he made, seemed charged with some further, self-conscious, meaning, as if he were a shadow puppet always mindful of the magnified, exaggerated image that he threw on the screen behind himself. Here, it made for an oddly disjointed impression. Georgi was trying to be at once the courteous seducer, the older friend initiating his junior into the delights of adulthood, and the gallant awakener of the sleeping prince.

And Michele, who would not have cast himself in the role of sleeping prince, and to whom it had never occurred to think of himself as being in need of protection, was charmed despite himself, and he stepped forward and kissed him, quickly but fiercely.

Georgi was looking at him intently, through narrowed eyes. 'Is it all right?' he murmured.

Michele, not quite wanting to commit anything to words, just nodded.

'Good,' Georgi said, and brought both hands up to cup his face, and kissed him again.

This time round, Michele thought he might as well enjoy it, and he let his mouth open to Georgi's searching tongue; he let himself feel and respond to Georgi's growing arousal. When Georgi led him into the bedroom, he followed. And when Georgi began unfastening the buttons of his shirt, he tried to reciprocate.

Georgi raised his eyebrows, smiled, and shook his head. 'Not yet.'

'Then when?'

But Georgi was walking him backwards until there was nothing he could do but fold onto the bed. He lay on his back, looking up, seeing Georgi looking down at him with an unreadable expression: a very faint smile that had something like compassion, something like understanding, something like admiration in it. Not pity, Michele thought, he couldn't bear pity, he didn't want it. He reached an arm up and caught Georgi by the elbow, pulled him down to him, fumbled for his shirt buttons.

'I said,' Georgi protested, 'not yet.'

'I don't care.'

And nor, it seemed, did Georgi, because suddenly they were grappling, pulling at each other's clothing, kissing with an urgency that Michele would have found embarrassing had it been only on his side.

'Somebody should tell you,' Georgi said, 'you're lovely, and your skating was beautiful today, and whatever's gone wrong, you'll find a way past it.'

'Is that really why you brought me here, to tell me that?' Michele asked, mortified.

'Yes,' Georgi said, low, breathless, 'it is.'

Then, mercifully, he stopped talking, because he was kissing his way down Michele's chest, and further, further, and Michele was past being mortified, past worrying about whether it would ruin his skating, past thinking about anything other than the hot, wet, pull of Georgi's mouth on his cock, the steady, firm, grip of Georgi's hands on his hips, and his own building, overwhelming, exquisite, desire and release.

  
He fell asleep afterwards despite his best efforts, and when he woke Georgi was seated in the armchair that was squeezed in between the door and the bed, reading a book by the dim lamplight. He laid it down when Michele sat up.

'Sorry,' Michele said. 'I didn't mean to go to sleep.'

Georgi stood up, fastening his robe. 'Don't worry. I thought you might need some rest. Would you like tea? Coffee?'

'I really should get back,' Michele said. He sounded more reluctant than he'd meant to.

'No doubt we'll meet again.'

'On the ice, you mean?'

Georgi leaned against the doorframe, and Michele was not sure whether he was moved to laughter or to sympathy by his soulful expression. 'For you,' he said, 'this does not need to have been the last time.'

'Or for you,' Michele said, and threw a pillow at him.

And Georgi's startled chuckle as it bounced off his shoulder and fell to the floor felt like the first triumph of the season.


End file.
